With the change of climate there also came a gradual alteration of the world around us. The vast primeval forest on the northern edge of the Vale began to thin out, for one thing, and it was replaced by grassland. I’m sure the Algars approve of that, but I preferred the trees myself.
There was also a rather brutal alteration of the climate of the far north. Belar, however, persisted in his plan to find some way to close with the Angaraks again, and his Alorns were obliged to endure truly savage winters.
There in the Vale, however, we had more on our minds than the weather. The cracking of the world set a lot of things in motion, and Aldur kept the seven of us very busy making sure that things which were supposed to happen did happen. We surmised that the Angaraks were doing the same thing. The two contending Purposes were undoubtedly maneuvering for position.
About twenty years after the cracking of the world, our Master summoned us all to his tower and suggested that one of us ought to go to what is now Mallorea to find out what Torak and his people were up to.
‘I’ll go,’ Beldin volunteered. ‘I fly better than the rest of you, and I can move around among the Angaraks without attracting any attention.’
‘Somehow your reasoning there escapes me, old boy,’ Belmakor said. ‘You’re a rather remarkable-looking fellow, you know.’
‘That’s the whole point. When people look at me, all they can see is this hump on my back and the fact that my arms are longer than my legs. They don’t bother to look at my face to find out what my race is. There’s a kind of anonymity that goes with being deformed.’
‘Do you want me to go with you?’ Belsambar offered. ‘I’m an Angarak, after all, and I know the customs.’
‘Thanks, brother, but no. You’ve got some fairly strong opinions about Grolims. We wouldn’t be anonymous for very long if you started turning every single priest of Torak inside out. I’m just going there to look, and I’d rather that Torak didn’t know that I’m around.’
‘I wouldn’t interfere, Beldin.’
‘Let’s not take the chance. I love you too much to risk your life.’
‘You really shouldn’t go alone, Beldin,’ Belzedar told him, his eyes strangely intent. ‘I think perhaps I’d better go too.’
‘I’m not a child, Belzedar. I can take care of myself.’
‘I’m sure of it, but we can cover more ground if there are two of us. The other continent’s quite large, and the Angaraks have probably spread out by now. The Master wants information, and two of us can get it faster than one.’
Now that I think back about it, Belzedar’s arguments were just a bit thin. Angarak society was the most tightly controlled in the world. Torak was not going to let his people spread out; he would keep them under his thumb. Belzedar had his own reasons for wanting to go to Mallorea, and I should have realized that helping Beldin wasn’t one of them.
The two of them argued for a while, but Beldin finally gave in. ‘I don’t care,’ he said. ‘Come along if it means so much to you.’
And so the next morning the two of them took the forms of hawks and flew off toward the east.
We all dispersed not long after that. The Master had some fairly extensive tasks for me in Arendia and Tolnedra.
The young she-wolf went with me, of course. I hadn’t even considered leaving her behind, and it probably wouldn’t have done me any good if I had. When we’d first met, she’d said, ‘I will go along with you for a while.’ Evidently, we hadn’t come to the end of that ‘while’ yet. I didn’t really mind, though. She was good company.
The shortest route to northern Arendia lay across Ulgoland, so the wolf and I went up into those mountains and proceeded in a generally northwesterly direction. I made us a proper camp every night. Fire had made her nervous right at first, but now she rather liked having a fire in the evening.
After a few days I realized that we were going to be passing fairly close to Prolgu. I didn’t really like the current Gorim very much. This particular successor seemed to be terribly impressed by the fact that the Ulgos were the children of the father of the Gods. I guess that made him feel that Ulgos were better than the rest of mankind. I reluctantly concluded that it’d be bad manners to bypass Prolgu without paying a courtesy call, so I veered slightly north in order to reach the city.
The route I chose to reach Prolgu ran up through a thickly wooded gorge with a tumbling mountain stream running down the middle of it. It was about mid-morning, and the sunlight had just reached the damp bottom of the gorge. I was wool-gathering, I suppose. A kind of peace and serenity comes over me when I’m in the mountains.
Then the wolf laid her ears back and growled warningly.
‘What’s the problem?’ I asked her, speaking in the language of men without even thinking about it.
‘Horses,’ she replied in wolvish. ‘But perhaps they are not really horses. They smell of blood and of raw meat.’
‘Do not be concerned,’ I told her, lapsing into wolvish. ‘One has encountered them before. They are Hrulgin. They are meat-eaters. What you smell is the blood and meat of a deer.’
‘One thinks that you are wrong. The smell is not that of deer. What one smells is the blood and meat of man.’
‘That is impossible,’ I snorted. ‘The Hrulgin are not maneaters. They live in peace with the Ulgos here in these mountains.’
‘One’s nose is very good,’ she told me pointedly. ‘One would not confuse the smell of man-blood and meat with the smell of a deer. These flesh-eating horses have been killing and eating men, and they are hunting again.’
‘Hunting? Hunting what?’
‘One thinks that they are hunting you.’
I sent out a probing thought. The minds of the Hrulgin aren’t really very much like the minds of horses. Horses eat grass, and about the only time they’re aggressive is during the breeding season. The Hrulgin look a great deal like horses – if you discount the claws and fangs – but they don’t eat grass. I’d touched the minds of Hrulgin before at various times when I’d been traveling in the mountains of Ulgoland. I knew that they were hunters and fairly savage, but the peace of UL had always put restraints on them before. The minds I touched this time seemed to have shrugged off those restraints, though.
The wolf was right. The Hrulgin were hunting me.
I’d been hunted before. A young lion stalked me for two days once before I’d finally chased him off. There’s no real malice in the mind of a hunting animal. He’s just looking for something to eat. What I encountered this time, however, was a cruel hatred, and much worse, to my way of looking at it, an absolute madness. These particular Hrulgin were much more interested in the killing than they were in the eating. I was in trouble here.
‘One suggests that you do something about your shape,’ the she-wolf advised. She dropped to her haunches, her long, pink tongue lolling out of the side of her mouth. In case you’ve never noticed, that’s the way